On August 27, the Van Gogh Museum launched its completely new website. The new website directs its focus on the stories about the life and work of the best-known Dutch artist. Visitors can unravel various themes related to Van Gogh's work and life. Obviously, the museum’s entire collection can be found on the website. You can zoom in on details and share images via social media. The extensive database of the collection can be searched via a range of entries: genre, location, subject or year for example. The main navigation is transparent and it is divided into three major topics: Visit the museum, Meet Vincent and About the museum. The website is fully responsive and suitable for all devices.

The Van Gogh Museum holds a wealth of knowledge and stories about the life and work of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). It manages the world’s largest collection of paintings, drawings and prints by Van Gogh (201 paintings, 437 drawings and 31 prints). Making the colourful stories about Van Gogh's world accessible to the public is an important mission of the museum.

These wonderful stories are now presented interactively to enrich and inspire the many Van Gogh fans. The stories are told by means of themes that were important in Van Gogh's life and work, such as nature, friendship and colour. The story of each theme can be experienced in different ways, enabling the visitor to scroll through them and to discover new things all the time.

The story about nature, Artist in nature. Solace and inspiration en plein air clarifies how Van Gogh experienced the connection between nature and his work. In a letter dated from 1874 that can be read online, Vincent recommends Theo to go on long walks frequently and to love nature, because ‘this is the true way to get to understand art better and better’. Van Gogh liked to paint en plein air even though it came with certain disadvantages: ‘… I had to pick a hundred flies and more from the canvases that you'll receive and then I'm not even counting the dust and sand &c. – not to mention that one or more branches will have scratched them while I carried them across the heather and through hedges...’

Worldwide, millions of Van Gogh fans share their passion for this best-known Dutch artist. The new website of the museum therefore focuses on making Vincent van Gogh's world accessible. A new theme will be published on the website every two months: Van Gogh’s relationship with his brother Theo followed in September; a wonderful story about his friendships was posted online at the end of 2014. Visitors to the website and the museum were invited to give input so as to help decide what the story line may be in 2015.

Visitors to the website can discover the collection on the basis of high quality images. All works on the website can be downloaded free for non-commercial use and can be shared through social media. The website is entirely responsive and is suitable for different monitor sizes, from PC to laptop, from tablet tot smart phone. Fabrique is responsible for the design of the website and Q42 for the technical realisation. The information on the website is provided in Dutch and English.

In addition to the average of 1.5 million museum visitors per year, the Van Gogh Museum is also popular on social media: it has 432,429 fans on Facebook, 89,900 followers on Twitter and 3.7 million followers on Google+.